This Love of Mine
by Quinn Mallory
Summary: I'm not too good at writing this sort of thing, but I don't know...they seemed like one of those couples that was so improbable it works perfectly, if that makes any sense. Katia and Roman fall for each other between dodging bullets. Complete - I wanted to go for a more fleshed-out three-parter, but was having trouble getting it to not suck as it was.
1. Chapter 1

**Day 3**

Roman smashed his fist down on the workbench. "Fuck this shit!" he shouted. "I'm not a goddamn electrician! How am I supposed to take bits of wiring and -"

"Roman, calm down, please," Katia told him, hurrying down the stairs. "I'll help you, let me take a look. Isn't one of those a broken radio with no antenna?"

"Yeah, maybe, but I don't know how to fix it. If you've got any ideas, go ahead. I need a smoke."

Katia wasn't ordinarily this rude, but she was tired of his complaining. "Yeah, that's excellent. You proceed to kill a few more of your brain cells, fill your lungs with garbage, and stink up the place while I do all the work. Sounds amazing."

"How many times have you bitched, already, about not having coffee?" he demanded, throwing a roll of duct tape across the room. He continued in a high, squeaky voice. "Oh, no, I need coffee or I can't wake up! Are you _sure_ there's no coffee in the cabinet?" He snapped. "Why do you drink that horse piss?"

"For your information, coffee drinking is a long and illustrious tradition. The philosophers of the Enlightenment laid the foundations of modern civilization while drinking coffee and talking in coffeehouses. The -"

"Oh, save it for someone who cares, egghead. I need a smoke. You want a fucking radio built, you fucking build it, bitch!" He stomped out of the room, headed upstairs.

"Jerk," Katia muttered at his departing back. Not for the first time, she questioned her choice of survival partner, but she really didn't have anywhere else to go. Grinding her teeth, she retrieved the duct tape, then began trying to make sense of the radio. She had learned some of this back in school, but this thing was complicated and she wasn't sure which parts they had. After some rummaging through the supplies, she found a damaged antenna from a different radio and started trying to connect it to the first radio.

Roman came back, walking slowly down the steps, about ten minutes later.

"I'm sorry," he said, coming in. "I'm so sorry. I just...I mean..."

Katia put down the diode she was holding ( _which_ end was positive again?) and looked at him. "If we are going to live here, like this, and watch one another's back," she said gently after a moment, "we - I - you need to know who I am, and _vice versatum_."

He stood there for a moment, face closed. Then his expression shifted. "Ah, what the hell," he said. "We - " He stopped speaking for several seconds, then tried again. "They - the Vyseni - have better, well, bigger things to do than track down one deserter."

Katia said nothing.

"We had to stand up to the Grazni oppression, you know?" he said, saying "Grazni oppression" like he'd said and heard the phrase a hundred times before. "We were all Vyseni back home. Before the rebellion properly started, me and my mates, you know, we all went round spraying up the walls, 'Vysena Lives', that sort of thing. Slung a few rocks at the cops...I threw a brick through the window of the Transport Office. So of course, when the war started, I joined up."

"You were a Vyseni?"

"Yeah. They even made me a corporal, the captain needed NCOs and there weren't enough men with experience. Everything was going well at first, the Grazni oppressors were, you know, disorganized. There were revolts all over the southeast. Ulria, Etrolia, Gravia..."

Katia nodded, knowing most of this.

"Then they confronted us. We took very heavy losses. We were quite simply outclassed. It wasn't pretty."

Katia shivered, but he kept talking, apparently unaffected.

"So after we lost Gravia, they pulled my unit back to Pogoren for some R&R. With the defeats, a bunch of Grazni bootlickers started crawling out of the woodwork here. We were here, so they sent us out to take care of them." His voice changed. "But they weren't. I mean, sure, there were some, but most of the people we rounded up, I don't think, they did anything, or were any, any threat. And nobody...nobody tried to, to find, to..."

"Investigate?" Katia said quietly.

"Yes, no one tried to investigate them or figure out who was innocent. We just shot them. I tried to stop them, I tried to talk them out of it, but I was just a corporal, keep my mouth shut and do my job. I...I went along, for a few days...then we caught...then..." His voice broke, and he turned and hurried out of the room.

Katia let out a deep breath, and thought for a few long moments. Then, noticing the light was failing, she returned to the radio. She needed to go take the rest of that stuff from the abandoned house as soon as the sun set, and couldn't spend much more time on this today.

 **Day 10**

Katia continued fiddling with the workbench, swearing almost as badly as Roman. The "Mechanic's Handbook" she had, said they'd need a temperature sensor to make an efficient furnace, a lamp to make the genetically optimized NewGen seeds produce vegetables in only 4 days' time (as she understood it, these seeds were included in aid drops for this purpose, but not used for normal agriculture because they were very expensive and an environmental hazard), and various other bits of electrical hardware. To make any of this, the book called for a soldering iron; they had one with a missing plug, which she was currently trying to hook up to the power. The problem was, she couldn't solder the connections on the iron, without a working iron.

As she tried to heat the solder, the wires loosely twisted around each other came apart again, and the iron went dead. "Fuck this s - tuff!" she said, giving up for the moment. As she pulled herself from under the workbench, Roman walked in.

"How's Bruno?" she asked him.

"He's still sleeping, but the herb meds you gave him seem to have helped."

"I look forward to some of his cooking," Katia said, a flicker of a smile crossing her lips. She got up. "How've you been doing?"

"I've been reading that book of yours," he answered. "It's interesting stuff, but I don't understand all the words. Maybe the Vysenan cause...well..."

That did give her a smile. "I can answer your questions later," she said. "I'm glad you're taking an interest in the history of all this, even if most of it is a confusing disgrace to humanity. Knowledge is power."

He snorted. "Power is having a bigger gun than the other guy, and knowing how to use..." She just looked at him. "Well, I walked right into that."

"Yeah, pretty much. Don't you trained soldiers _know_ how to avoid ambushes?" she asked, teasing him. "As for having a bigger gun...well, that certainly -"

She had meant to make a joke about that, slip in an innuendo, but then she remembered what had happened to Roman just three nights ago. These days, either kind of big gun was all too effective on women.

He raised his eyebrows. "Forget it," she said quickly.

"Katia," Roman said, changing the subject, "even if you get this thing built, we don't have enough...stuff to put a garden together. Even the NewGen seeds'll take days to get us anything useful, and I'm hungry, Bruno is hungry...we need food."

"Roman, I suggest that we deal with one problem at a time. Please allow me to finish this?"

"Yeah, of course. I'll go take a little break for another chapter."

 **Day 11**

There wasn't much to be done today. They had managed to finish the mixer for the new machine workbench, and the machine workbench itself, yesterday. After making more bullets from the materials they'd collected, there weren't enough materials or wood to build anything else useful.

The food wasn't quite gone, but they had only a little meat, no vegetables, and no more canned rations. Cooking that wouldn't do much to feed the three of them, and would take a lot of water and wood. Bruno, as there was nothing for him to do, was downstairs sleeping off last night. Katia had been out scavenging last night - oddly enough, despite being physically weaker than the other two, she seemed to be able to carry more stuff - but there was only the one bed.

Katia set down her book, trying to ignore her rumbling stomach, and went upstairs. She found Roman sitting in the armchair, trying to smoke a roll-up cigarette, which stank even worse than the normal ones and was making him cough and swear.

"Roman?" she said, as he was in between coughing fits.

"Maybe if this goes on long enough," he said, extinguishing the thing,"it'll get me off smoking for good. What's up?"

"We need food."

"You think?" he answered sarcastically. "That's the kind of insight only a journalist could have."

Katia briefly tried, but failed, to come up with a witty retort, and settled on making a rude gesture. He laughed. "You'd fit right in in the forces these days," he added.

Katia was startled for a moment, then realized he had a point. "It's not just me," she said. "You would never have considered spending time reading that book just a week ago. We seem to be changing each other, and doing it remarkably rapidly."

"Well, it's like in the forces, you become friends real fast because you have to trust each other. Maybe that's all it really is, anyway..."

"All what is..."

"Well, you know, my buddies and I before the war, we were tight, you know? But I wonder whether they...well, what they did. And whether they'd approve of what I did, and whether I should give a fuck about that, and..." He trailed off, then tried to take a drag on his currently unlit cigarette.

"Thinking for yourself is hard," Katia told him. "But it's what you have to do, if you want to be more than a pawn in someone else's game, an animal reacting to stimuli, a..."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," he cut in, but not as dismissively as he would have last week. "What I meant was, maybe there's no such thing as friendship. Maybe it's just everyone trying to get whatever they can."

"That is the _evolutionary_ reason for friendship to exist, yes. It is the ability to cooperate, not tool use of itself, that is so valuable: people work together for their mutual advantage. But to incentivize that, there are emotional bonds: if it was just cold logic, the prisoner's dilemna would always assert itself, and no one could ever trust anyone else."

Roman thought about that for a few seconds, then gave up. "I'll have to think about that. You were saying about the food."

She started to sit down on the floor, but he promptly got up. "Sit down, I'll stand," he said. Slightly surprised, she sat in the chair, and he leaned against the wall, looking at the crude map of the city she'd sketched on a blank page in the back of a book.

"We've cleared out the flats, the supermarket, and that destroyed duplex, at least as concerns food," she said, pointing to the locations. "We can get food from other places, but we'd have to steal it, most of them."

"What's that, 'Quiet House'?" he asked, pointing to the edge of the map.

"That neighborhood is at the bottom of a shallow depression, near the edge of the city," she explained. "If the rebels tried to take it, they would be exposed to government fire from three sides." Roman nodded, seeing the logic. "And if the Grazni oppressors tried to come in, the same thing," he finished.

"Right, so it has generally been left alone," Katia went on. "Most of the houses have been stripped, but there are still some people living there, who might have food. I heard from the trader that one has this old couple living there. But..."

"Well?"

"I don't think they would be willing to trade."

"OK, I should be able to sneak or force my way in. If they're old, I can handle them, unless..." He saw Katia looking at him, and trailed off. There was a pause. "Look, if they're old, how much longer are they gonna live anyway? If not us, someone else will just go take everything."

"Maybe," she said. "And maybe not. Anyway...do you...remember what I said? About...why I am still here?"

"You came to cover the war and look for your folks, couldn't find them, and were stuck in the city," he answered immediately.

"Right," she said, a little bemused by the snap recall. "Well, what I didn't tell you was that I could probably have got through the lines before the army closed in around Pogoren. But there was this woman in my neighborhood, the army took her, for, well, you were at the supermarket...they wanted 'bail', _id est_ , ransom. I made the decision to volunteer to deliver it."

"I see," he said, not completely understanding why she was telling him this. He already knew the Grazni oppressors were scum, who took whatever they could whenever they could.

"I got...held up...doing that for a while. By the time -"

"They didn't -"

"Not quite. I was...groped up, somewhat. They might have, but their commander was, if not halfway decent, a quarter decent. He stopped them, we got the transaction done, and she and I got out of there. The point," she told him firmly,"is that we aren't them, and we should never be. We don't steal."

"We don't steal," he answered, not quite as firmly, but almost. "But if we rule that out," he asked, practical soldier's mind asserting itself, "where can we find food?"

"The hotel," Katia said, "but no -"

"What exactly have you heard?"

"The trader said there were some...maniacs in there. Not just thugs, real sociopaths. There are screams coming out of there..."

"We have a pistol and a hatchet," Roman said, calculating. "I can take both. I'm rather good at killing these days," he added grimly. "How many were there? Do you know?"

"Roman, I really do not think -"

" _How many?_ "

"Three or four," she told him reluctantly. "But anything could happen."

"I can deal with that many," he said firmly. "I can sneak up on them, we learned to do that too. If I'm lucky, I can neutralize one or two before the others even realize I'm there."

"Roman, I...I don't want you to go!" she told him, surprised by her own sudden burst of emotion. "We need you to protect us," she said, trying to cover for it. "If something - hell, I'll be blunt, if you got killed, the rest of us would be done for." To her relief, he seemed to buy it.

"Look, I've seen starvation," he answered, "and it's not pretty. The body feeds on itself to keep the vitals alive. After a few days, you know you're starving, want nothing more than food...but you're too weak to get it. And it just gets worse from there."

She didn't ask how he knew so much about this; she didn't really want to know.

"If you are willing to do this, for us, risk your life...then fine." She grabbed his shoulder. "Be careful." Shit - too much, he was confused...no, never mind, he's not. She shook him a little, trying to make the gesture as comradely and masculine as possible.

"Enough sleeping," Bruno asserted, stamping up the stairs. He went into the kitchen. Katia and Roman sat there, looking after him, knowing what was coming. He quickly came back. "Look, I can't cook air. We need food."

"We have a plan," Roman told him, before Katia could decide what to say. "I'm going to go to the hotel, the big one downtown."

"Is there food there?"

"We believe so."

"All right. I wonder, are there any cigarettes left?"

Roman snorted. "You can have this if you want it, but it sucks."

Katia rolled her eyes. "You two should be trying to get off of those." She left before they could respond, and the inevitable argument about coffee was used. That was different!

"You should get some rest," Roman called after her. She'd sleep tonight.

 **Day 12**

Katia awoke suddenly. With the bunks underground (easier to keep warm, and much harder for someone to just walk in and slit your throat), it was impossible to tell what time it was. She staggered out of bed, shivering slightly, and found her wristwatch on top of an old crate she was using as a nightstand: 5:09 AM.

She put most of her (increasingly filthy and smelly) clothes on, groaning and rubbing her eyes as she staggered out of the basement and up the stairs. The first rays of sunlight were shining through the front window, illuminating the room dimly (they kept some lights turned off when on watch: it improved your night vision and made it less obvious the place was inhabited).

Bruno came hurrying downstairs, knife at the ready, but saw who it was and stopped. "Oh, Katia, you're up early."

"I suppose I am," she said. She began a probably futile search through the kitchen cupboards for any remaining coffee. "Have you seen Roman?"

"I'll go look," he told her, heading for the front door.

After some more rummaging, she found no coffee, no more food, and some dead bugs. She started to throw away the latter, but then stopped and put them back: they weren't at that point _yet_ , but they might be soon. Where was Roman?

" _Katia!_ " Bruno bellowed suddenly. She ran out of the kitchen and to the front door, which was open, to find...oh God...Roman was staggering up the walk, blood, blood all over him, a huge gash in his side...

"Help me!" Bruno yelled to Katia, who was standing there, frozen. She snapped out of it, dashing forward and supporting one of Roman's arms. With Bruno holding him up by the other, they got him through the front door. They got his pack off quickly. He moaned.

"We need to dress the wound!" Katia shouted.

"No, wait!" Bruno answered, as she was about to run for the bandages. "We don't have enough of that stuff to get him healed! You can help him to the hospital tonight, then we'll use our supplies to finish patching him up."

"You're right, of course," she answered, heart pounding. "I just...well, we need to get this bleeding stopped. Get those extra sheets from the cabinet upstairs. They're clean. We can slow down the flow."

Bruno turned and ran for the stairs. Katia helped Roman into the armchair, lowering him carefully. "What happened?" she asked, gripping his hand.

"I climbed up...near side of the hotel...center of building...huge shell hole, couldn't get through...went upstairs, all these...mutilated bodies..." He gasped in pain, clutching his wound, and trying to keep himself together. "I snuck up on one...smashed his head in with the hatchet, the others...didn't hear it. Bagged another one coming up the stairs...his crony heard that, but I put three bullets into him...before he could do anything. I started...breaking the prisoner out...and the last son of a bitch snuck up on me...and knifed me. Got all the food I could carry...God only knows how I got back." Bruno came crashing down the stairs with the sheets and threw one to Katia, who began ripping it into strips.

"OK, don't try to talk," she said. "Just stay with me." She decided (more or less arbitrarily) that she had enough strips, and hesitated, unsure what to do next. Desperate to do _something_ , she just started tying them tightly around his body over the wound.

"Fuck, Katia, that hurts!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she told him.

"Here, let me," Bruno said. She moved aside to let him take over; her hands were so covered in blood she couldn't handle the strips properly. She clutched Roman's hand, noticing the rough heat, and held on. "You're going to be all right," she told him, with nothing else to do.

"Hopefully the hospital can get you some antibiotics, because this won't do shit about infections," Bruno added ( _very helpful_ , Katia thought) as he tied up the last strip. "Right, let's get him in bed."

"Bed, yes..." They didn't even try to have him support himself, just each took one end. With Katia in front and Bruno behind her, they climbed carefully down the stairs, then took him quickly to the bed. Once they had got him in, there wasn't much else to do. They stood there, breathing hard, cooling down for a few moments.

"Someone should go see what he got - if there's meat, it needs to go in the refrigerator," Bruno stated. Katia looked at him, then back at Roman.

"Right," he said, with an odd little smile. "I'll deal with it, you stay with him." He turned and left, muttering something Katia didn't quite catch about having been young once too.

Katia knelt by the bed. "Do you need anything?" she asked quietly. Roman asked her for some water, and she hurried to retrieve it, accidentally splashing some on herself as she ran back down the stairs. She slowly poured it into his mouth, telling him to keep still, then realized she was watching the firm muscles of his jaw flex, and stopped herself abruptly.

She stayed with him for about two hours. He slid in and out of consciousness; they spoke quietly whenever he was awake and lucid. She was startled how well they already knew each other, but they'd ended up just talking for hours on end over the last week, with nothing more to do once they ran out of materials. To her relief, there didn't seem to be very much more blood coming from underneath the torn-up sheets. She was surprised how much time had passed when she checked her watch. Moved by some impulse, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek before departing.

Katia was an intelligent woman; it didn't take long for it to hit her as she went upstairs. _No_ , she thought. _We're nothing alike, and now isn't the time anyway._

 _Tell that to my estrogen_ , responded another part of her.

 _How about we wait until he's_ not _slashed full of holes?_ responded the first part (probably the left hemisphere, now that she thought about it; maybe any internal argument was just the hemispheres of your brain going at it?).

 **Day 16**

"Feeling all right?" Katia asked Roman. He had healed quickly after treatment at the hospital, and although he would be left with a nasty scar, he was almost as good as new already. He was out of bed and moving around, a bit gingerly but otherwise normally.

She'd been removing things, bit by bit, from the hotel over the last few nights. One more trip might make sense, but after that there would be nothing left. They now had everything needed to construct a garden, and grow NewGen vegetables, except some electrical wiring; there just were not enough parts to connect the lamp. There was certainly no more wiring in the hotel: everything accessible had already been ripped out by looters, and they didn't have and couldn't make the necessary tools to tear open the walls enough to get at the remaining wiring. Which left them with no source of vegetables, no canned food, and no way to cook efficiently.

"I'm fine," he assured her. "I got worse than this from that mortar round when we were falling back. My whole side looked like it had been through a sausage grinder."

"You told me that story, minus the sausage grinder," Katia told him.

"What have you been working on?"

"Katia and I," Bruno responded, coming in, "have been trying to figure out how to connect the power to the vegetable garden. Here, Katia, I'll give it a try. You and Roman go...relax."

Slightly amused, but indeed relieved, she got up and followed Roman downstairs.

"Do you think he'll figure it out?"

"Maybe. If you couldn't do it, I doubt he can."

"So we need more wiring then? And thank you, flattery will get you everywhere."

" _Everywhere_?"

"Oh stop."

"Now who's walking into ambushes?"

Reaching the bottom of the stairs ahead of him, she stopped and turned away. The moment he set foot on the bottom, she jumped on him, catching him by surprise and sending them both crashing to the floor.

"You are," she told him sweetly, pinning his arms down.

He expertly shifted and rolled his body, suddenly whirling them about, and soon she was the one pinned. "Surrender to the superiority of Free Vysena," he told her.

"Fine, I surrender. Congratulations, you've won the war against the Republic of Katia. The Grazni must be shaking in their boots."

He laughed. There was then a pause, while they both hesitated.

"Well, are you going to kiss me or not?" Katia asked.

"What?"

"Well, you know, we've kind of gone through the whole procedure here: exchange of teasing, impromptu playful wrestling, _et cetera_. To put it in your terms, kissing me is kind of standard operating procedure at this point."

He did. She did. He was quick and rough with his lips and tongue, she slower and more sensual, but they soon got it sorted out. God, the taste, the smell...the war and the world melted away, and there was nothing but blazing passion throughout Katia's body...or something like that; she would be eternally shamed to use such a cliche.


	2. Chapter 2

**Day 16 (continued)**

 _Okay, maybe it's a cliche, but so what_ , Katia thought in the moment between the end of the last kiss and start of the next. Then she stopped thinking about clichés, or anything else for that matter, except Roman's lips and hands and warmth...she hooked one leg around him on the floor...pushing something rather large and hard against her groin. She started to smile at that...but it was oddly thin...was that _two_ of them?!

Roman, blushing furiously, released Katia's hip with his left hand, fumbled in his pocket, and extracted a large screwdriver, which he held up. They both looked at it for a moment, frozen, then Katia started to laugh. It was hard to stop once she'd started, and Roman joined in as well, this shouldn't be _that_ funny...Roman was laughing so hard that he rolled off of her and almost banged his head into the wall.

It was a couple minutes before either of them could talk. One would start to stop laughing, then be set off again by the other. It wasn't just the screwdriver, of course, it was this whole thing where, you know, the world had gone insane.

"Seriously," Katia began, and by an immense effort of will got herself under control. She glanced back at his pants, and saw that there was still a fair-sized bulge there. "Have you never done this before?"

"Done...uh..." He was blushing again, and she kinda liked it. "Done what?"

"Well, your kissing's too good for that to be your first," Katia said, her cynical side and analytical journalist coming to the fore again. "But have you ever had actual intercourse before?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, totally, loads of times." She just looked at him. "No."

"It's fine," she assured him, smiling. _Salvage his pride._ "I understand, the revolution doesn't leave a lot of time for that sort of thing. It could explain some of your anger issues, though. Ever heard of sexual frustration?"

"Oh, yeah, I, uh, did that to a girl once. She loved it."

Katia started laughing again, despite knowing she really shouldn't.

"What? _What?_ " Then he gave up. "OK. What does _that_ mean?"

Katia was about to respond when Bruno came crashing down the stairs, excited. "I did it!" he exclaimed. "I remembered what they taught me about electricity back in my school days. Say what you like about the Communists, but they educated kids properly -"

"The Russians were worse than the Grazni!" Roman shouted at him, leaping up from the floor. "The Communists were oppressive scum, they should all be shot!"

"Now listen here, young man, when I was a boy there was no one starving to death in the streets, like there is now. And there weren't gangs of armed thugs," Bruno went on, looking pointedly at Roman, "trying to overthrow the government and killing people every ten minutes!"

"I am not a thug! You take that back, or I'll, I'll beat your head in!" Roman sputtered loudly.

"Uh - Roman -" Katia began.

"Are you a Commie too?" Roman demanded, wheeling on her.

She weighed the possible responses, and not seeing much difference on the defusing-the-situation heuristic, decided to go with her immediate personal desire. She calmly grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him in, and kissed him rather messily. By the time she ran out of air and had to release him, his body was considerably more relaxed. Well, she smirked, _most_ of him was more relaxed.

"You said the grow lamp is working now?" she asked Bruno calmly.

"Ah, yes, it is," he said, adding something about being some number of years younger which she didn't quite catch. "I remembered, from my excellent Communist education," he continued pointedly, "that most metals are electrically conductive. I found some aluminium cans, which will carry the current."

"Won't they oxidize?" Katia pointed out.

"Oh, yeah, well, that'll take a little while."

"Sounds good," Roman said, heading upstairs quickly.

Getting the NewGen seeds planted in accordance with the package directions took most of the next hour. Katia quickly realized another reason these weren't used in normal agriculture: they required purified water (due to extreme vulnerability to blights and other infections), and a lot of it. After Roman had done it wrong for the third time, the other two ordered him out. He returned a few minutes later with a steaming mug of coffee, not quite the way she liked it, but what the hell, he was making an effort and that was more than you could expect from most people.

They finished, covered in fertilizer and water, and still hungry, but optimistic. Enough food remained to last until the new vegetables were supposed to be ready, for given values of "enough", "food", and "last".

With evening coming on, and another trip out for more wood and parts (which always seemed to be insufficient no matter how much she brought) in the offing, Katia let her mind wander as she settled into a chair. Bruno rattled into the room, his face as unreadable as ever, but Katia could tell he actually thought they had a chance of getting through this alive. He began rummaging through the stack of books, looking at each one. A romance novel was seized and quickly dismissed as she watched, getting her thinking about Roman.

Why was she even thinking about sex right now, she asked herself. Wasn't stress supposed to reduce the sex drive? Not to mention that none of them had had a proper shower or bath in weeks, if not months, and Roman was just a street -

She had started to think "thug", but found her mind recoiling violently from that word. For good reason - he'd been told a lot of things that weren't true, lived a rough life, spent too much time around bad influences, but if she believed in souls, she'd say he had a good one. So that was one thing, and she had been getting frustrated with the kind of men in her social circles before the war; they _lived_ cynically, whereas for her it was just an external shell, one she'd had to create to be a good reporter and ask the questions that needed asking, because if you let yourself think that way all the time, what was the _point_? Of anything? Roman wasn't that, at least: he saw people in black and white, as opposed to the dark grey everyone else seemed to perceive.

Maybe she just wanted someone she could tell what to believe...

"You're thinking again," Bruno said, choosing a book and looking at it with mild interest.

"What? Oh, yes, well, someone has to do that around here."

"Got any pearls of wisdom, then?" he asked, sarcasm annoyed but not truly angry.

"Oh, well...I was just trying to work out why I'm attracted to Roman - to _anyone_ \- in this...situation. You'd think that with all the stress..."

"Are you sure you weren't under more stress before this stupidity started?" Bruno asked, setting the book down. "Sure, we're running or fighting for our lives a lot -"

"Roman fighting, and the rest of us running," Katia snarked.

"Either way, sure, that's stressful, putting it mildly. But when we _aren't_ doing that, we aren't really under too much pressure. I mean, as a chef -"

"Damn it!" Katia yelled suddenly. Bruno cocked an eyebrow.

"You're right," she said more quietly, but with her voice shaking. "Don't you get it? I _failed_. I saw this coming, and I was trying to stop it, I was a _reporter_ , I always thought that if I spent a little longer cleaning up my wording or found one more source or got to the bottom of one more problem, people would read it and _get_ it, they would realize they were driving us toward the abyss, and I was driving myself mad and not sleeping...you know why I needed coffee so badly at first? Because by the end I was sleeping a couple hours a night and drinking five cups a day to stay awake, trying to get the _truth_ out, instead of the rebel and government lies." Her voice was bitter. "And I really thought it would work, that it would matter. I really thought, like you did, that people were too smart for this. That someone would back down and decide it wasn't worth this just to decide which set of somewhat corrupt officials would run this part of the country, or whose descendants got to live where. But no one did."

"It wasn't your fault," said Roman quietly but firmly from the doorway. She jumped. He entered the room.

"What did you hear?" she asked anxiously. A more quote-unquote civilized person would have said something about not being able to help overhearing, but Katia knew he wasn't that person, so she just took it as given.

"Everything since you said you failed," he answered. "And...Well, I don't think it would've ever mattered. The only use I ever had for newspapers was cat litter. There were lots of people like me, no one knew shit till it was too late."

"Well, that really helps, knowing my life's work was worthless," Katia snapped reflexively. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said a moment later. "Oh, hell...look, I need to get my pack ready if I'm going to get that stuff you wanted." She hurried out of the room and towards the pack by the front door. Roman followed, leaving Bruno in the sitting room reading his book.

"Well, I was kind of hoping..." Roman gestured vaguely at himself and Katia, as he caught up with her. He was _blushing_ , damn he was cute sometimes, funny how he could be so brutal and cynical sometimes yet so _innocent_...

"Cool it, Don Juan," she told him, smiling in spite of herself. "Plenty of time for that later." She slung her pack on and headed out, estimating a roughly 85 percent chance Roman was staring at her ass. Which she was OK with.

 **Day 17**

Katia dragged herself up the path to, for lack of a better word, home, a couple of planks of wood and a sheet of plastic trailing on the ground behind her. The sun was starting to rise, but she should be safe now; there hadn't been a line of sight out of this street from here since the building at the other end collapsed.

Of course, one of the planks picked exactly that moment to slide out of the string she'd tied around it, thudding to the ground. She spun, startled by the noise, sending various other items flying out of the pack and scattering on the ground. Swearing loudly, she started gathering everything up. Roman would have to wait - she needed sleep, the kind that wasn't a euphemism.

She had to spend nights hauling stuff, because she could haul more than anyone else. And then whenever the trader came she had to get up and deal with him. Even with the coffee, which was running low again of course, lack of sleep was taking its toll. She staggered into the foyer, dropped everything on the floor, and headed down the stairs for bed. Roman and Bruno met her coming up, and Roman had opened his mouth when Bruno put a hand on his shoulder and muttered something to him. Roman then nodded awkwardly and continued up the stairs. Thank God for that.

Katia slept for the rest of the day, exhausted enough to be immune to the alternating sounds of hammering and arguing filtering down from above, as Bruno and Roman tried to put a new workbench, and some tools for it, together, so they could make cigarettes and medicine.

Some of the work was simple and repetitive enough that Bruno had time to think. He was still worried about his old friend, who could be anywhere by now, who he had committed to protect, and he might have failed. No, he didn't want to think about that, and tried to focus on what he was doing, despite this being unnecessary. When Roman almost hit his thumb with the hammer, Bruno embraced the distraction.

What were those two going to do when this was all over? Sure, this seemed to be more than just lust, but based on what they'd told him, Katia had family to find abroad, and Roman couldn't follow her there, unless they tried to get married solely for that purpose and he didn't imagine Katia would be on board with that kind of fraud. Thinking about this wasn't really any better; Bruno again returned his undivided attention to the sanding.

The work was finished within a few hours, Bruno and Roman speaking only when necessary. They had to work together to survive, but had never really liked each other in the first place, and the argument about Communism the other day had made each suspicious of the other.

"Do we need more materials?" Bruno asked coolly, inspecting their work. It was crude and ugly, but they should be able to make cigarettes with it from the tobacco they had, and that was the important thing. If they could find the right herbs, there was potential there too...

"How should I know?"

Bruno muttered something incomprehensible but uncomplimentary and went to look at the heap of what under normal conditions would be junk: ruptured tires, scrap lumber, old cardboard, some bolts and screws, and God knew what else.

 **Day 18**

Katia awoke in the small hours of the morning, feeling much better. Sure, she stank, her clothes were filthy, and she had no good way to even wash her face. But she'd gotten used to all of that, and a proper sleep for the first time in a long time made her feel energized, ready to go, like how she'd felt on her first _real_ assignment at the newspaper, the one about the bribes to the city council.

She climbed the stairs slowly, not sure what was going on. She reached the ground floor, where soft snoring was audible. They didn't have any beds on this floor. Still a little confused (just because you _feel_ really alert right after waking up doesn't mean you _are_ ), she followed the noise into the foyer, and with mixed relief and annoyance saw Roman in their army vest and helmet, shotgun by his side, fast asleep in a chair.

She crept up behind him quietly, then grabbed his shoulders. It occurred to her just a moment too late why this was not a good idea.

He immediately jumped up, whirling around and driving a fist into her midsection. Stars flashed before Katia's eyes as the air was mashed out of her lungs in a massive _humph_. She staggered and fell over backward, allowing him to grab the shotgun and aim it at her, then recognition.

"Katia!" he yelled, anger and relief clashing. He demanded colorfully to know what the hell she was doing. She lay on the floor, struggling to get enough air into her lungs to respond. "Don't _do that_! I can't...oh, shit, I'm sorry..." He dropped the shotgun (sending Katia's heart back into her throat - that was the problem, gasp, with these militias, they didn't train people on, gasp, things like basic firearm safety), hurried over, and pulled her to her feet, holding her upright and against him as she caught her breath.

"Damn!" she managed to get out. "I was...I mean, that is...I wanted to..." As her breathing got back to normal, she became aware of the warmth and lithe, shifting muscles of his chest...OK, then, she decided, direct approach it is. She reached down and grabbed his ass, squeezing gently, delighted with the firm tone it had somehow retained despite his recent lack of protein. Their heads rose, their eyes met, and they kissed long and soft and slow, and time seemed to warp because somehow they were both in the chair, Katia across Roman's lap.

Roman, scared out of his mind but wanting this more than anything, fumbled awkwardly with her shirt. If this was how her tits looked after months of near-starvation...he grasped and squeezed and she gasped and there was a loud bang on the front door.

"Hey! Roman! I've got all there was left. Let me in!"

Roman, trained for instant action, stood straight up, setting Katia down on her feet, fixed his belt, and was striding across the room to the door looking like normal before she'd even figured out what was happening. Embarrassed more by how much Roman was making of it than anything else, she hurried out of the room before Bruno could come in.

Roman, pissed off, unlocked the door and yanked it open with a crash.

"I've got everything I could find," Bruno said, setting it down. "You need me to help moving it?"

"No."

"Right then, I'm going to bed."

"You do that."

Bruno looked at him quizzically for a moment. Maybe everyone involved in this war was just nuts, he thought as he headed downstairs.

Katia walked quickly downstairs ahead of Bruno before he could arrive, slipping back into one of the "bedrooms" (i.e. rooms in the basement with beds) and shutting the door. She heard him clomping down into the other bedroom, and the door thumping closed. Moving quietly, she opened the door to this bedroom, pulled her shirt off, and sat down on the bed. Hopefully Roman would come down and get the idea.

He did both of those things.

I'll leave the rest of the end of that night (and beginning of that morning) to your imagination.

 **Day 18, continued**

Katia awoke slowly, with bits of sunlight filtering down from the upper floors. Her muscles, and other areas, were sore in the usual semi-comfortable post-[insert euphemism of choice here] ways. A gentle snore came from Roman, whose arm was wrapped around her.

She was hungry, of course, having had little to eat yesterday and nothing today, but she'd kind of gotten used to that. She snuggled back against him, truly relaxed for the first time in years. It was funny how your life had to be in constant danger for you to appreciate it.

Pregnancy shouldn't be a problem, she concluded after a sudden burst of fear. She hadn't had enough food in months, and her periods had been sporadic or nonexistent for most of that. Why the hunger hadn't killed her sex drive was a good question, but it didn't matter. For once, she didn't have to solve the mystery. She lay there quietly, thinking slow, soft, vague, warm.

Some vague amount of time passed, and she was mostly back asleep.

"KATIA! TRADER!" Bruno's voice boomed, as he crashed down the stairs. She jerked upright; the sound and motion woke Roman, who rolled out of bed onto his feet, fists raised. It took Katia a few seconds to make sense of what was going on, then, swearing loudly, she jumped out of bed and began running around the room finding her clothes and putting them on.

Franko sighed, leaning against the doorframe to be sure he was out of view. Every time he made his rounds, there was at least one house without its act together. Completely drunk and/or naked people had answered doors on various occasions, although the "best" one would be when an old guy with a few screws loose called him Satan and threw a bucket of urine at him. He fiddled with a strap on his (incredibly useful) "ergonomic frame pack" (whatever that meant - it worked though) and sighed again.

The door was pulled open slowly. He turned. Oh, it was _this_ house, he liked this house. More specifically, the person who traded with him at this house.

"How's business, Franko?" she asked, standing a little closer than necessary. As usual, he looked her over, thoroughly, noticing the rumpled clothes and unusually wide stance.

"Quite good, actually. How's _your_...business?"

"My... _business_ is none of _your_ business...but I wouldn't mind getting down to...business now."

"Good, I'd like to do some...business...with you."

"Just business today, I'm afraid," she answered with that little smirk. "What do you have?"

The usual pattern ensued: they argued, insulted each other, flirted a little, argued some more, and finally settled on an acceptable exchange. Katia shut the door thoroughly satisfied: they now had enough food for a few more days, she calculated.

Franko...well, he was a decent guy, but, well, the...spark wasn't there. She wondered gloomily whether using sex appeal to get better deals this way was better or worse than prostitution. At least the prostitutes delivered on their promises, although hers was only implicit, although that kind of thinking led to all kinds of trouble, although, although...

"Bruno! I got us some food! Come cook!" she called up the stairs. There was no response. She called again, got no answer, and went up the stairs, immediately spotting him by the radio.

"Bruno, what -?"

"Listen!"

"... _the peacekeeping force will be comprised of American, British, and French troops, among others. The cause of the sudden willingness to negotiate is unknown, although it is speculated that further sanctions against the Grazni regime..._ "

"There's going to be a cease-fire," Bruno said. "For real, this time." His voice broke. "They're mobilizing now. I don't...I don't know whether it'll be peace, but at least we can get out of this city."

Katia stood frozen. She'd been straining to see a light at the end of the tunnel for what seemed like a very long time, and suddenly here it was. It was like when it takes you so much time and mental effort to find some item you're looking for, you've almost forgotten why you need it by the time you find it. Now she was remembering.

She had to find her parents, then they should probably get out, at least until they knew whether the cease-fire would hold. Their finances would need to be sorted out, she'd have to let some friends in the States know she was alive, her journal's material cleaned up for publication (as an article, series, book...?)...

"I'll let Roman know," she said indistinctly. She was halfway down the steps when the problem occurred to her.

She still had her passport and press credentials. She could find her parents. But Roman couldn't come, it was very unlikely he had a passport, _and_ he might be on a list somewhere, given his involvement first with a gang and then the Vyseni. So...so what? It was just a fling, a hookup, something to literally and figuratively keep her bed warm -

 _That's not true, and you know it._

Yeah, she knew it.

"Katia?" he asked. She jumped, blushing. He looked at her, confused and scared.

"I'd be glad if, that is, I hope that, you, uh, enjoyed..."

"Oh, you were great," she said, with the kind of casualness that shows you really mean it, which she did; he'd more than made up for with enthusiasm what he lacked in experience. "Listen. Roman. It's on the radio...it's going to end."

"What?"

"NATO or some other international organization is, has organized, peacekeepers, and the two sides have agreed to a cease-fire," she said, the get-your-facts-straight she'd had to ingrain in her soul coming to the fore.

"So the Grazni win?"

"That's still to be determined," she said hastily. "There'll be negotiations. Probably a two-state solution in the end, that's the way these things usually go after everyone finishes posturing and squabbling."

"So w - uh, the Vysenans win?"

"Maybe."

They stared at each other, not sure what to say. Katia broke the silence.

"Come on, let's find out what's going on." She turned and headed back up the stairs, not waiting for him to follow, but somehow relieved when he promptly did, even though she didn't know why.

They all huddled around the radio silently. The crackling, tinny voice kept talking, but didn't seem to know too much. After the third repetition of the same message, Bruno stood up.

"I'm hungry. Katia, did you get us any food?"

" _Yes_."

"Right, well, let's have a look." He lumbered out of the room and down the stairs. Katia flicked the radio off and looked at Roman.

"Tell me about something," she said a little desperately. He looked at her oddly, but nodded.

They talked about their homes, their lives, the war, what they were, who they wanted to be. Katia's natural honesty combined with the feeling that it didn't matter, and Roman had spent his life bottling everything like this up so he wouldn't look weak. So they let things spill out. Katia told him about that chance encounter with a reporter, as she was graduating from high school and the USSR was coming apart, when she decided what to do with her life. He talked about running black market goods as a kid, the close calls with the police and the constant worry about informants. And on, and on, it went, hours flying by. But there was one subject they carefully avoided: what would happen when the war ended.

 **Day 23**

"Katia, I don't think this is necessary," Roman said, hurrying after her. "We can survive without food until tomorrow night."

"I'm hungry, and we don't know if they'll have enough supplies for everyone," she answered, a little bemused. She put a finger on his chest and ran it slowly downward. "What are you so worried about? Never acted like this before!"

"I just...look, I don't want you to get killed _now_. This is almost over for you, you can get out!"

She pulled back the finger; this was serious. " _I_ can get out?" But she knew the answer.

"I have to stay here," he said seriously. "I need...I need to tie things up. I need to know that I did the right thing. You...you've shown me how that matters."

"You did the right thing, leaving."

"I deserted. I ran away. Whatever else it is -"

She wrapped her arms around him and slowly folded him into her. They stood there, silent, wrapped around each other, and Katia started to cry.

"What's wrong?"

"I...I don't...I don't know, it's this, it's all this, why, why do I live when I let this happen...and so many don't? Why does...oh..." She lost control, as some of the pent-up horror and rage of the last months poured out, weeping and striking weakly at nothing.

Roman tried to figure out what the hell to do. He'd never seen her do this. Whenever something like this happened with his old friends, they'd all punch the guy on the shoulder and tell him to tough it up. Probably not the way to go here. While his conscious worked on it, more basic parts of the male brain took over: they realized at about the same time that his hands were around her ass.

"Oh, what the hell," she declared, and kissed him. Roman grabbed and squeezed and wanted this, and then she pulled away, seizing her backpack, running away down the path in front of the house. He stood there for a moment, then gave the wall a good kick (hurting his foot), and stomped back inside, slamming the door, not quite sure what he was angriest about.

"Katia gone scavenging?" Bruno called from upstairs, by the radio.

" _Yes_."

"OK."

Roman walked up the stairs, breathing heavily. Bruno had the radio on.

" _Again, remain inside and in cover while the peacekeeping forces move in. There may be continued violence throughout the night._ "

Roman looked around. It was a nice building. Not where he'd thought he'd be having his first time, but there it was. He might even miss it.

Without much else to do, he headed for bed.

 **Day 25**

No one had slept. Well, that had been the idea, anyway. By 6 AM Katia was dozing in the armchair with Roman (holding on to every minute they had left), and Bruno had given up and gone to bed around three. The firing had continued through the night; both sides seemed determined to send as many of the enemy to the land of sunset as possible while they still could.

Katia suddenly jerked awake, with no idea why. She scanned the room rapidly, listening and looking for someone breaking in. She could feel Roman stirring too, and slowly rose, ready to shout and wake him. And then she realized what it was.

The guns had stopped.

"Roman!" she said, carefully squeezing his leg so he wouldn't Hulk out on her again. He jerked awake, almost immediately looking confused.

"The shooting stopped," Katia told him. His face cleared, sort of.

Bruno came crashing into the room. They looked at each other and nodded.

"Well, then," he said very calmly. "That's that."

"Yeah."

"I'm going to go see what's going on," Roman said curtly, and headed for the door.

"Wait," Katia told him, "I'll come."

Bruno nodded, understanding. "Do you want me to get your things together?"

"That would be nice, yes."

Roman nodded curtly and strode out the door. Katia followed quickly.

Neither of them spoke as they walked to the end of the street.

"I love you," Roman blurted out suddenly as they reached the corner.

"I love you too, damn it," Katia answered. "I'll..." She was going to promise she'd come back for him after she'd sorted everything out, but realized she didn't know whether she could actually do that, and wasn't completely certain she wanted to. She trailed off awkwardly as they turned the corner, and saw the American soldiers on the street, stars and stripes on their sleeves, mixed with UN people in their blue and white.

Katia walked over to the nearest one, carefully keeping her hands in view. After they'd got through his reaction when she spoke in perfect English, he was able to direct her to a post where lists of the names of Pogoren refugees in various places were being made available.

For Katia, the rest of the day seemed surreal. There were occasional bursts of gunfire a long way off, but no artillery. The streets were openly full of uniformed men, many seemingly just standing around. Impossible amounts of food and water were being distributed haphazardly, with no clear system worked out yet. Few residents were moving about on the streets; those who did walked quickly, tensed as if expecting to be shot at at any moment. Old habits die hard, especially when _you_ died if you didn't have them.

They were both too stunned to speak much, looking at all this and trying to process that it was really all over. Katia knew they were still both in denial, in shock, and would probably have emotional meltdowns at some point and take months or years to come to terms with everything. But for now, she had a purpose, and was in luck: her parents were on a list of people in a German refugee camp. Relief flooded over her: they were alive, and not too far away. She hugged Roman tightly.

Neither the bus terminal nor the airport would be operational again until at _least_ tomorrow, so back they went.

"I...look, Roman, I wish it didn't have to be like this," she said. "That is, I'm glad this is over, of course, but..."

"Hey, I understand," he said. "I know how much they mean to you. If I'd had that maybe I wouldn't— well, that doesn't matter."

She kissed him, soft and slow, and they both knew it felt like goodbye. Sure, they went on back, but barely spoke, and both felt so strange holding the other's hand that they soon stopped. Bruno did all the talking when they got back, exclaiming happily over the food they had brought, insisting on showing them everything about his preparation thereof, and spending most of dinner talking, loudly and loquaciously and cheerfully so much it rang hollow, about the restoration and how he might be able to open his own restaurant and become popular if he acted quickly. Neither of the others really minded.

Bruno ran out of things to say at some point.

"I don't know if I ever thanked you two for saving my life," Roman said. "So, thanks."

"Oh, we wouldnta got through without you, Roman!" Bruno enthused. "You saved all our skins from those thugs more than once, one way or another. Both of you, if you ever need anything, just find me. I'd love to be able to cook something decent for both of you!"

Katia just nodded. There were no words, nor were they necessary, to fully express what they'd all shared. In the ensuing silence, Roman got up and walked out, and Bruno began gathering up the dishes, clattering them a little harder than needed.

In the fuzzy transition zone between too late at night and too early in the morning, Roman took off his helmet and vest, stowing them and the shotgun in a back room. Then he walked out the door, and would never come back.

Katia wasn't too surprised. They'd said goodbye, even if they hadn't. Whether it _was_ goodbye, or just "so long", well...

I don't know how this story ends. It was passed on to me from an old friend of Bruno's, who didn't know the rest of it. Maybe Katia never returned to Pogoren, or found some other man logic would dictate was a better match, or spent all her time on her work for too long. Maybe Roman left the city, haunted by his past, or never quite made the decision to go find Katia. Or maybe they met again, the old fire unextinguished and inextinguishable, and were married in a beautiful ceremony (for which Bruno, when asked to be best man, agreed on the condition he could also do the catering), lived long and happy lives together, and had three children all with their mother's brains and looks and their father's strength and tenacity. Given how chaotic, irrational, counterintuitive, and utterly unpredictable love is, and how much this one was all of those things, there's no way of knowing. But I like to think it all worked.


End file.
